Two of an ATM card-cloning gang held

The Delhi Police on Friday said they busted a gang of swindlers who travelled to Delhi from their hometown Hisar in Haryana, lived in hotels or rented rooms and

The Delhi Police on Friday said they busted a gang of swindlers who travelled to Delhi from their hometown Hisar in Haryana, lived in hotels or rented rooms and cloned ATM cards by stealing data and overwriting on invalid or stolen plastic cards using hand-held skimming devices.

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The gang has six members, and the cyber cell of the crime branch arrested two of them, identified as Ramesh Kumar, 29, and Sonu Singh, 22. The police recovered 21 cloned debit cards of various banks, a skimming machine, and two cellphones that they used in the crimes.

Senior crime branch officers said that the gang’s modus operandi differs from other gangs’ involved in similar frauds. Unlike other gangs that usually tamper with ATM keypads or replace the card holder’s debit card with a fake while engaging them in a conversation, members of this gang impersonate bank executives and scan the cards’ data via skimming devices on the pretext of rectifying issues faced by the cardholders. The racketeers had purchased the skimming devices online, the officers said.

“To avoid getting caught, they mostly visited ATM booths in secluded areas in Delhi-NCR that are not manned by security guards. They usually targeted elderly persons or those with a rural background. They would secretly note the cardholders’ PIN and used it to withdraw money using cloned cards,” said the deputy commissioner of police (cyber cell, crime branch) Bhisham Singh.

The gang has been active in Delhi-NCR for the past few months, but its members were never caught as they would maintain a low profile and use several tricks to avoid police attention. “The arrested men told us they would transact low amounts using the cloned cards since they believed that card users rarely lodge complaints with banks or the police for low amount frauds,” said a senior crime branch officer associated with the team that busted the racket.

On July 19, one Amit Goel,33, withdrew ₹8,000 and was counting the currency notes when a masked man using the other machine in the ATM booth in Delhi’s Karampura pointed out that the machine was asking for his cellphone number.

“I fed my contact number, but the machine did not accept it. Since I was holding cash and other items in my hands, the man offered to help me. He took my debit card, inserted it into the machine and fed my cellphone number, which the machine accepted. Thereafter, we both left,” said Goel.

According to Goel, his card stopped working, and he got a ₹500 transaction message. Goel thought the money was deducted by the bank as a usual charge for availing various facilities such as netbanking.

“I ignored it and did not lodge a complaint. It was only when I got a call from the crime branch office who told me about the fraud that I realised that I had been cheated,” said Goel.

Another crime branch officer said that his team members had received information through their criminal intelligence network about this gang and they were collecting information about the suspects.

On July 21, the officer said they received information that the suspects would come to an ATM booth in outer Delhi’s Prem Nagar to withdraw money using the cloned cards. “We conducted a raid and arrested two of the men with 21 cloned cards and a skimming device. We have solved two cases with these arrests and are working to find the original holders of the remaining 19 cards. Raids are on to nab the four other members of the gang who are on the run,” the officer added.